just about every aspect of this film has been nit-picked around here (funfun!) but this is something that bothered me the first time i saw it and every subsequent viewing: the girl on the bridge who, during the scene where vulcan is imploded, says the above line, then they continue to hang around for several more minutes. long enough, if memory serves, for kirk and sulu to be beamed back aboard and spock to go down to rescue his parents and return.
what is this? bad editing? bad writing? and anyway, most people understand on some level that this would be the case. why was this line even in there? seems like a cheap attempt to elevate the tension where this wasn't really necessary.

Eh, all the Treks do that kind of thing to raise the tension. I mean, everytime there's a battle scene, we hear the same exact refrains again and again: "Shields down to 20%!!!" or "Divert all power to the shields!!!" or "We can't take another hit like that!!!" etc.

It all certainly SOUNDS cool, but nothing really ever comes of it. It's just for effect.

then they continue to hang around for several more minutes. long enough, if memory serves, for kirk and sulu to be beamed back aboard and spock to go down to rescue his parents and return.
what is this? bad editing? bad writing?

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It's a non-issue. What precludes them from having reached a minimal safe distance during that time?

so it's just a stupid line? <sigh> i guess i can live with that. in a film that's neat but already far from perfect, i guess it's just one more goofy thing. but for some reason it bothers me more than just about anything else. huge coincidences? ok. iffy, double-faced science? fine; after all, it is science fiction. but this bit is just unnecessarily stupid. in future i shall do my best to just ignore it.

Who's to say that the Enterprise didn't back off a bit to a safe distance after that line was spoken? Why do people need to see everything in exacting detail? Would you only think the Enterprise moved away a bit if we heard the "beep, beep, beep" of it backing up?

Actually the line still makes total sense but I'm too tired to explain why in a huge amount of detail.

Suffice it to say that an "unsafe distance" doesn't have to be the same thing as "a distance at which we have no possibility whatsoever of escape". After all, they barely made it out alive. I would say that they had passed safe distance long before they actually tried to get away.